Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday had come around for another year and that only meant one thing; mandatory dessert after a mid week meal!

What I didn’t realise that it wasn’t really a normal thing to celebrate in Australia as when I mentioned the awesome gorge fest, I was greeted with very puzzled faces. Much like Bonfire Night and Halloween, Aussies don’t really get into pancake making on a Tuesday night. My confused colleagues then asked why we celebrate this random event, to which I actually couldn’t provide an answer. First of all, I thought the pancakes symbolised the round stone rolling away from the cave Jesus was laid to rest in but that didn’t make sense as it wasn’t Easter yet, so Jesus was still living by this point. I then had to resort to asking my whatsapp group of girlfriends back home and they too didn’t know the answer. Basically when you get so used to a tradition you don’t question it and rarely have an explanation up your sleeve. So trusty old Google came into save the day and reminded all of us Brits, that pancake day was a way to use up all your ingredients in your cupboard in preparation for lent. I’m not the best Christian but I at least I got there in the end!

Where else was the best place to spend the night eating pancakes but at Tash and Ben’s! It was a week late but the thought still counts…

We started off the evening making gnocchi (Tash saw my blog and wanted to make it too). However, the gnocchi didn’t turn out as good as last time because Tash changed the flour in the recipe to corn flour (she’s gluten free and doesn’t like the taste of their special flour). I didn’t know these were the ingredients we had to work with but carried on nevertheless. We used the same recipe in my last post, apart from the ‘flour’ substitute. They were a lot easier to form into shapes which worried me a little but we kept going. They floated up in the water like normal so I had some hopes. We then finished the dish off with a cheese and chive sauce (it was the same recipe as before just change the blue cheese for garlic and chive cheese). The three of us sat down and took our first bite; of pure potato. It wasn’t gnocchi at all but little potato balls in a cheese sauce, however they were still yummy!

Next up was pudding and time to flip those pancakes! Tash was in charge and made cute wee crepe style pancakes (the best type). Here’s the recipe:

2 eggs

100g corn flour (Gotta be gluten free)

300ml soya milk (Tash is also lacto free)

So with our extremely hipster pancakes we then got to participate in the best part; topping our pancakes! Tash and Ben had cooked Nutella into theirs but I kindly denied the sweetness overload, instead I went a for a tarty option. I topped mine with: lemon and sugar (classic combo), strawberries, raspberries and passionfruit. And here is my masterpiece:

I had two of these sweet yet sour bad boys and was full to the brim.

After one unsuccessful meal, the pancakes outshone the evening and left everyone feeling happy that we celebrate a religious holiday in such a random way.